Final Project . The final project is due April 23 at 11.59 pm . It should be a proposal (6-10 single spaced pages) for a nonmarket good valuation study, using any of the methods explained in the class. It should include: . Introduction/background, literature on the subject (use Google scholar!) . (SP) Survey method, target audience, questions rationale . (RP) Data sets available, empirical strategy (how do you identify the value?) . Broader impact (who cares?) . Bibliography (no more than 1 page) . Tables and figures of your own making are appreciated . An example is posted on CanvasFrancesco Cenerini RESEARCH PROPOSAL: SURVEY OF 'WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR ENDANGERED LANGUAGES ACROSS COUNTRIES Introduction Depending on estimates and definitions, between 50 and 90% of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken today in the world are expected to go dormant' before 2100. While languages have evolved, gone extinct, and been replaced for millennia, the current rate of decline in languages spoken is unprecedented [I], and is strongly connected to issues ofcolonialism, economic and social discrimination of minority groups around the world. Among these, there are thousands of indigenous and isolate languages, which contain valuable information about the environments they developed in, the history of the people that speak them, and the culture and worldviews of these peoples. Analogously to the problem of biodiversity decline, current and future benefits of preserving such diversity are unclear, and possibly not quantiable. In the case of biodiversity, the public has been much more aware of the problems connected with the loss of species, and public campaigns for the protection of these have existed for well over a centLu'y. Practices such as Safe Minimum Standards for animal species are thought to be the most efcient solution for the conservation of biodiversity without incurring in prohibitive costs for society1 and they are widely accepted both by policymakers and in the economics literature. For languages, however, the decline in diversity has been much less studied, and while some countries and regions have decades of minority language policymaking, these have been mostly based in protecting linguistic rights and avoiding linguistic and ethnic discrimination, more than the decision ofkeeping endangered languages alive as heritage. Many countries have embraced policies of monolingualism either officially or effectively or bilingualism with English, making it very hard for minority groups to maintain their languages alive. The negative effects of language death vary widely, and especially in indigenous communities have been connected to reduction in mental health [2] especially in increased youth suicide [3] , physical health [2], and academic outcomes [4]. These effects have been largely ignored by the economic literature, and there is a clear need for further studies to establish or even just hint at causal relationships. At the same time, language minorities have increasingly been accepted in many countries {c.g. France reversed its long-standing discrimination of regional languages in 202 | , making them "national treasures" of the country [5]). A map of the approximate global legal situation is shown below (Fig. I]. This tapestry of legal provisions is often hard to implement, since there is no consensus on what policies might achieve the intergenerational transmission ofa declining language without resulting in large economic inefficiencies, and the literature on the subject is scant. Language shift1 moreover, is notoriously hard to reverse, and many linguists doubt that it can be done at all [6]. Even in the most conventionally accepted successful language revival, Modern Hebrew, linguists have shown that speakers have subconsciously kept lndoEuropean language patterns, making the language closer to an lndoEuropean language with wide Semitic relexication {i.e. the language maintains [ndo-European grammar and patterns, while using Semitic words) [7]. This shows that, if the objective is to maintain language diversity, policies should aim at making the communities that speak the endangered languages comfortable using them in all or most aspects of life, and making intergenerational transmission as easy and efcient as possible while the languages still have active speakers. It is also unclear how much public support there is for costly policies aimed at reversing language shift, and while willingness to pay {WTP} for animal species both terrestrial and marine has been calculated many times and in many different contexts, there is not to my knowledge any study on WTP for endangered languages. Considering how linguistic diversity and minority issues have evolved in different ways depending on the country, the survey would target countries with marked differences in the number of languages and approaches to their protection (or oppression). 1While language revitalization has an extensive literature in linguistics, both 'om Western and Indigenous perspectives, research in the policies needed is mostly of field experience, while it is nonexistent in the economic literature, and the few examples of economic theory on the subject are simplistic and use ethically controversial assumptions, such as the necessity of making every minority language speaker fluent in the dominant language [8]; others tend to focus instead on languages that are not at risk of becoming dormant, such as Greek in the Balkans [9] or French in Canada [ID]. Moreover, wellmeaning governments have often created policies that assume minority languages as having correspondences in all aspects to dominant languages, for example ofcializing their use in domains such as government or justice, where often no vocabulary exists, and making the language impossible to use for native speakers, who must learn complicated terminology planned by a language authority [1 1]. As explained before, linguistic rights are most often granted under the framework of antidiscrimination laws, and while these have had large positive impacts for the communities, the fact that most minority language speakers are at least bilingual in the dominant language means that, in the long run, there is no incentive for maintaining a minority language alive, and more specically no reason to transmit it to the next generation. As an example, the last speakers of Manx the Celtic language of the Isle of Man used to tell younger speakers "Cfiay'eon or) cosneyptng {as}! y Ghnir'cft" [IE] or "you will not earn a penny with Manx." This type of anecdotal evidence shows how intergenerational transmission is inextricably connected to the parents' desire for the economic success of their children. Thus, avoiding discrimination is not enough to ensure survival, but rather economic incentives need to be put in place so that speakers will pass down the language to the following generation. Justifying economic incentives for such language policies is not necessarily straightforward, however, particularly if there is no idea of how much the wider society is willing to devote to this type of policies. In fact, it is common for some speakers of the dominant language to perceive minority language protection as unfair privileges [13]. The lack of economic research on endangered languages is in stark contrast to the wide literature on endangered species, biodiversity, conservation, and heritage. 1WTP surveys have been conducted in all of these contexts, and both costbenefit analysis and impact evaluations have wellestablished literatures, which are often used by policymakers. In the case of endangered languages, instead, it is often hard to implement and evaluate policies, as no established guidelines exist. This survey's objective is to use a method and concepts from this literature and apply them with the needed modifications to the context of endangered languages. In particular, the survey will follow a Contingent 1'v'aluation (CV) to estimate primarily WTP and secondarily Willingness To Accept (WTA). This is necessary due to the fact that many language policies will not only cost money to taxpayers, but have varying degrees of intrusiveness in the dominant language speakers' lives, ranging from multilingual road signs all the way up to requirements of language knowledge for public jobs or k 12 education. The combination ofthe two values would follow Cao, Ren, Du [2|]l0) [l4]. Enshrined in Constitution National low, Constitutional under debate National low Regions Bilingualism only No protection Figure 1: Legal status of linguistic minorities across the world (without microstates). Source: author's own elaboration.Su rvey Method Due to the fact that endangered languages are disappearing at a rapid pace everywhere, and results can vary widely depending on the policies enacted, a stated preference, Contingent llJ'aluation (CV) experiment would be more effective. Survey respondents will be presented with different referendum-like questions which would result different language regimes. Each regime has an estimated cost and estimated effectiveness, which comes from estimates of the sociolinguistic literature on the subject. Moreover, there is a number of auxiliary questions aimed at understanding more nuanced opinions on the presence of endangered languages in the speakers' lives. A preliminary list is shown in Table l. The survey would target countries listed below in Table 2 with different backgrounds, so that a more complex and accurate picture can be presented. In particular, I try to keep a balance between colonial countries, such as the US or AustraliaI and nation states, such as Japan or Italy. This is because languages can become minoritized either because of colonialism, such as the case of the Americas, Oceania, and many African countries, or due to a domestic language becoming dominant, such as in Europe and much of Asia. Secondly, the number of minority languages present in the country is also a possible factor that inuences people's WTP for them. In a country where only one Indigenous language is present, such as New Zealand, there might be more willingness to save its only minority language with respect to another country with hundreds of small languages, such as Australia. Thirdly, the historical political culture of the country is also a possible factor, i.e. whether the country has a tradition of accepting its minorities. Bolivia and Switzerland would be examples of countries that embraced multilingualism comparatively early on, while Japan and France would fall on the other side of the spectrum. Budget constraints will determine the number of countries where the survey can be administered, while maintaining the hierarchy of differences to be considered as a] coloniali'nation state; b) developingl'developed; c] number of languages; d) political tradition. Target Audience While endangered languages are saved first and foremost by their speakers, it is undeniable that the majority communities have large power over their chances at doing so, as examples in innumerable countries have shown. Moreover. legal protection of minority languages comes most often as a process of reckoning from the wider society of the discrimination of minority communities, and acceptance of a wider level of multilingualism within the country. Examples of this were the democratization processes in Spain or Brazil, Swiss referenda over Romansh use, English-Welsh equality in the UK, Scandinavian relations with the indigenous Saami, among many others. Thus, the survey should target speakers ofthe dominant languages in each country. Moreover, aer some brief research on the alternatives, there is no statistically feasible way to conduct the survey among minority speakers, first because the denition of a minority speaker is often unclear [l5], and secondly because asking of a choice experiment about one's own language disappearing would probably be besides beyond the point of'the survey very emotional and possibly hurtful. The aim of the survey, therefore, is not to nd out whether linguistic minorities wish to save their own languages they usually do but rather to assess the dominant linguistic community's willingness to pay to maintain the domestic linguistic diversity of their own country. This is increasingly policy relevant, as more countries move to recognize minority languages without much understanding over who should learn the language, in which settings, and how. Different policies entail different costs, and as many countries espouse Cost-Benet Analysis as the method of choice for policy analysis, knowing how much languages are valued is essential for more informed choices. Questions Every country has widely different histories of relations with their Indigenous minority languages, and this should be reflected in the questions, by tailoring them towards each audience's understanding ofhow to protect vehicular language of instruction], or requiring knowledge of the minority language for some types of jobs, such as government employees. nurses. or other professions that include speaking to clients. While not strictly related to money1 willingness to accept these policies means that the public is willing to accept a cost to preserve the minority languages, which might give rise to variations in attitudes, e.g. there is evidence that German speakers in Romansh-speaking areas are more opposed to extending Romansh language protection than German speakers outside those areas [I 7]. Table I. Prelimina ry s nn'ey exa rn ple Background [US example]: According to the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, in the US there are currently 145 endangered Indigenous languages. Some examples of these languages are Hawaiian, Navajo, or Cherokee. In the past half century or so, 54 Indigenous languages became extinct in the US, and most of the remaining are expected to be extinct by 2100, unless action is taken to preserve and revitalize them. The Native American Languages Act of 1990 states that it is US policy to "promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop Native American languages", but few policies have been enacted since then. However, a few programs have been proposed in the past, and some have been applied in other countries, which has created a general consensus around which policies work best, and the costs associated. Question: CongressfPar iamenth national referendum is discussing a number of measures to protect and revitalize Indigenous languages. For each proposal, there is a short explanation of the expected costs and effects of the policy. Choose the ones you would answer YES to. 1. \"ABC" system all students in K12 education will be able to choose among three options to study: model A, where all courses are taught in the Indigenous language of the place leg. Hawaiian in Hawaii] and only English is taught in English; model E, where half of the courses are taught in the Indigenous language and half in English; and model C, where all courses are taught in English but the Indigenous language is added as a compulsory subject. Proponents ofthe program point out that parents would be able to choose how much of the language their children will be exposed to. The program is known to be effective in increasing the number of speakers both in the Indigenous community and the non-Indigenous one. It is the most expensive {SK} due to the high number of teachers that will have to learn the language to teach their subjects, but the most effective at creating new speakers. 2. Immersive system a set of public and charter schools in the areas where Indigenous people live will be dedicated to immersive education in the Indigenous language, meaning that all students will be taught exclusively in the Indigenous language, and English will be introduced gradually and will always be used in less than half ofthe classes. Proponents of this program argue that this type of program will increase the number of speakers within the original communities although not as much as the ABC system - while being less expensive {tilt} and not \"intruding" in the education of other students. 3. Full officialization the Indigenous languages of every area are made ofcial for all purposes, which would make it necessary for all levels of governmentto be ableto provide official documents and services such as education {including university} and trials, public radio and television, and road signs in the respective Indigenous languages. The program is less expensive than the previous options {SK} but has been known to produce only a large number of "passive" speakers, that is, people who vaguely understand parts of the language without actually speaking it. Proponents argue that this is the best option to make speakers comfortable speaking the language in all domains of life, and eliminate linguistic discrimination, while not intruding into the wider society. 4. Labor requirements government jobs and some categories of jobs related to care, such as nurses, doctors, teachers, etc. will require a good fluency in the Indigenous language of the area in order to give equal access to all services to the remaining speakers, and thus increase the prestige of the language. This program would not impact education directly, but would create the need for many language schools to learn and pass the minimum required fluency test. This is a less expensive program ($X) than the previous, but critiques point out that it makes the few remaining speakers unavoidable privileged in the labor market. The proponents of the program consider these either fitting reparations (most languages become endangered through active discrimination) or a small price to bear from the wider society. 5. Partial/Voluntary every town, county, and state will have the freedom to decide which languages Officialization are official and to what level. This is by far the least expensive option ($X), but is seen as nothing more than a symbolic recognition with little practical effects. Proponents claim that this is the best option to let communities decide for themselves over the issue without central planning. (In Johnston et al 2017 this type of option is discouraged, but it is a real-life policy present in a few countries). Auxiliary Questions Would you want to learn the Indigenous language a) Yes, I would enroll in a course at 25$/hour of the area you live in? average cost of foreign language classes in the US) b) I would not pay, but I would learn through free digital courses or apps such as Duolingo c) No, I would not pay nor want to learn the language. If you have children, would you sign them up for a) In the K-12 school(s) they attend language courses in the Indigenous language of b) In an immersive school (almost 100% your area? teaching in the Indigenous language c) In a language course outside of school d) I would not have them learn the language What is your first language? Is either of your parents' native language different? Did you grow up bi- or multilingual? General demographic questions: age, gender, race, income, education, (possibly) political party affiliation.Table 2. Countries & Budget Colonial Developing Developed Americas USA Europe Asia Oceania Africa High # lang.5 X Low # lang.s X X Mexico X X X X Peru X X X X Bolivia X X X X Brazil X X X Italy X X Spain X X X X Japan X x Taiwan X X South Korea X X x x x x X India X X Indonesia X X X x x South Africa X Kenya X X X X New Zealand x X X X X Australia X X X X X Regarding the budget, Qualtrics is a well-known and established survey company with offices in a wide variety of countries (and every continent), with the possibility of producing the surveys in different languages (I will also personally translate the survey in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese). Depending on the cost per country and the budget available, the number of countries will be modified.Broader Impact _ne sociolinguistic literature considers almost obvious the pervading economic motives behind language death, and there is a large amount of sociological research on how economic incentives or more commonly disincentives and political factors drive changes in the languages spoken and passed onto future generations. _ne small literature available in economics on the subject is small, often simplistic and founded on controversial assumptions, which makes this project a possibly fundamental work for future language policy analysis and sociolinguistic research as well. Nonetheless, the survey would also represent a valuable addition to the recent literature mostly theoretical created by authors in the Research group Economics And Language [REAL]. Moreover, while there is no intention of finding causal relationships, the survey will denitely be a rst building block in hinting at possible relationships, such as the correlation between high GDP and low language diversity, but also a possibly higher WTP for the languages remaining. Comparisons between W'TP for endangered languages and species might also be of interest for future studies. In addition to that, including endangered languages in the environmental economic literature is in agreement with a growing trend in the study of so-called biocultural diversity, meaning the co-location of language diversity and biodiversity hotspots. The paper resulting from the survey would be of importance not only for the advancement of environmental economics and its applications on a novel eld, but also for elds such as sociology, anthropology, political sciences, among others. Besides the academic value ofthe research, the survey would be the first calculation of benets of language policy, which would complement the alreadyexisting literature on the costs and inefficiencies of language policy. This would be of great value in the formation of a new policyrelevant CB Analysis literature regarding languages as well as any other range of cultural goods, both tangible and intangible, such as archeological sites, performance arts, or Traditional Ecological Knowledge systems. The inclusion of this type of goods as heritage has become more common in recent years, as the establishment of a UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural lleritage in 2003 shows. Dissemination The survey will yield at least one paper in the field of environmental economics. while also complementing other research in applied microeconomics from the same author. Moreover, the TWTP estimates can be readily used for further research papers in (213 Analysis in a variety ofcontexts, such as the Welsh language in Wales and Basque in Spain. Target journals will include environmental economics {Journal of Environmenial Economics and Management. Ecological Economics), language policy and planning (Language Documemarion a Conservation. Language Problems and Language Pianning), cultural economics [Cultural Economics), sociolinguistic {Language in Society. Journal of Sociolinguistics), transdisciplinary journals {Human Biology), and general scientic journals {PLoS Oil-17'). The paper will be presented at conferences both before and after publication, with target conferences being Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Conference, Association for Cultural Economics International Conference, and Sociolinguistics Symposium. The author will disseminate personally the paper in the cultural economics and language revitalization communities, reaching out to groups such as Terralingua, the Endangered Language Fund, Wikitongues, 1000 Tongues, and Living Tongue Institute. References: [1] Wilford, J.N. (2007). World's Languages Dying Off Rapidly, New York Times, 09/18/2007. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/world/18end-language.html [2] Khawaja, M. Consequences and Remedies of Indigenous Language Loss in Canada. Societies 2021, 11, 89. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc1 1030089 [3] Hallett, D., Chandler, M.J., Lalonde, C.E. (2007). Aboriginal language knowledge and youth suicide, Cognitive Development, 22(3):392-399. [4] Demmert, W. G., Jr. (2001). Improving academic performance among Native American students: A review of the research literature. Charleston, WV: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools [5] Noubel, F., Dewick, E. (2021). The French government's U-turn on regional languages, Global Voices 07/26/2021. Available at: https://globalvoices.org/2021/07/26/the-french-governments-u-turn-on-regional-languages/ [6] Fishman, J.A. (ed.) (2001). Can threatened languages be saved? Reversing language shift, revisited: A 21st century perspective. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2001. Pp. xvi, 503. [7] Zuckermann, G. (2009). Hybridity versus Revivability: Multiple Causation, Forms and Patterns. Journal of Language Contact, VARIA 2 (2009). [8] Templin, T., Seidl, A., Wickstrom, B.-A., Feichtinger, G. (2016). Optimal language policy for the preservation of a minority language, Mathematical Social Sciences, Volume 81, May 2016, Pages 8-21. [9] Clark-Joseph, A., & Joseph, B., Cecile B. Vigouroux & Salikoko S. Mufwene (ed.) (2020). The Economics of Language Diversity and Language Resilience in the Balkans. Bridging Linguistics and Economics, Cambridge University Press. [10] Ridler, N.B., Pons-Ridler, S. (1984). Language Economics: A case study of French. Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development, 5:1, 57-63, DOI: 10.1080/01434632.1984.9994137 [1 1 ] Lane, P., Costa, J., De Korne, H. (ed.) (2018). Standardizing Minority Languages. Competing Ideologies of Authority and Authenticity in the Global Periphery. Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism. [12] Whitehead, S. (2015). How the Manx language came back from the dead. The Guardian 04/05/2015. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/apr/02/how-manx-language-came-back-from-dead-isle-of-man [13] Ramirez, M. (2018). El 70% de los vascos queda excludo de ser funcionario por el euskera; eso deberia alarmarnos (70% of Basques is excluded from government jobs due to euskera; this should alarm us). El Espanol 17/15/2018. Available at: https://www.elespanol.com/espana/politica/20180713/vascos-queda-excludo-funcionario-euskera-deberia- alarmarnos/322218381_0.html [14] Cao, J., Ren, Y., Du, G. (2010). The Combined Application of WTP and WTA in Contingent Valuation Methods. Journal of Environmental Protection, Vol.I No.3, September 2010. Doi: 10.4236/jep.2010.13034 [15] Weinberg, M., De Korne, H. (2015). Who can speak Lenape in Pennsylvania? Authentication and language learning in an endangered language community of practice, Language & Communication. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2015.04.003 [16] Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, Policy and Protocol for Use of palawa kani Aboriginal Language, 2019. Available at: http://tacinc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Policy-and-Protocol-for-Use-of-palawa-kani-Aboriginal-Language- 2019-1.pdf [17] Bondolfi, S. (2017). Can the ballot box help save Romansh? Swissinfo.ch 06/09/2017. Available at: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/directdemocracy/direct-democracy_can-referendums-help-save-romansh/43242690